[mjburgess]

Well, he's not right about WP Engine.

Wordpress is an open source project. If he's "right" about WP Engine, then he's "right" about basically every user of every open source project, and there ceases to be any such thing. OS is take-it-or-leave-it, if he wants contributions back, put it in the licence and also offer support.

[Dalewyn]

Way too many progressive people proclaim the virtues of free and open and then <pikachu_face.gif> when others take them for their word.

If you want compensation of any kind you must stipulate them before the fact.

[jeltz]

But is Matt progressive in any sense of the word?

[bigiain]

Perhaps in the "progressive cognitive dysfunction" sense...

[philistine]

If that guy was a progressive, he'd give 70% of his income straight to the government.

[didgetmaster]

I am confused. Is WordPress trying to change the open source license to a more restrictive one? Suddenly trying to enforce some terms of the existing license that they never did in the past? Or is it an old fashioned legal dispute where each party says the terms of the contract mean something different?

[mjburgess]

He's (pretending) to operate under an alternative history where wordpress requires contributions to its ecosystem proportionate to your revenue, and forbids any use of its trademarks or any related terms.

He's actually engaged in rich-vs-rich corp warfare and playing the open source community like puppets on a string.

[mardifoufs]

Well if we are just going by what's "allowed" legally and going by the license... automattic also hasn't done anything that's either illegal or a breach of the license. So going by that logic, they haven't done anything wrong either.

[pessimizer]

He's right about every user of every open source project. The license gives you code, it doesn't give you trademarks, infrastructure support or moral support.

I am amused to see the usual HN vibe both complaining that commercial entities crowding out creators with their own software is violating the "spirit of open source," and insisting that FOSS maintainers don't owe you anything morph into commercial entities don't owe the FOSS maintainers of the software users anything, and are owed trademarks and access to infrastructure.

WP Engine is a hedge fund spinning money out of FOSS. It's fine, it makes more choices available for people. But the idea that Automattic has to acknowledge them, and that acknowledgement cannot be hostile, that's not in the license.

[gitaarik]

What is he right about exactly?

And is Automattic providing trademark, infrastructure and moral support to WP Engine? As far as I understand WP Engine is just a WordPress plugin.